tl etl advice

So I’m team lead of softlines, got promoted about 3 months ago and have been with the company for about 1 year. Now the first few months I worked without an etl which was fine I ran the department temporarily with the help of the food etl . However I noticed the other tl slacking and pushing more of her work on me. I’ve been slowly taking up more of the softlines floor pad as responsibility and covering and finishing her work more and more. It’s stressing me out but I just wanted to see improvements in our section so I put up with the other tl slacking. (its not like I can coach her anyway) Now I have a new etl where this is her first retail job, and kind of didn’t get the best training I find myself teaching her things all the time but she’s catching on. Do I out right tell her what’s going on or let her figure it out for herself? I don’t want to seem like I’m challenging her or still trying to control the department I just want a killer partnership.

No one will ever know how you feel unless you tell them. First talk to the other TL, be direct and honest. If nothing changes then feel free to bring the ETL into it but have at least two workable solutions for every issue you bring up. I would try to solve it without the ETL but that's not always possible.

Executive Team Leader

I would say you need to focus on building that partnership with your other SLTL... I see this happen a lot between leaders who share areas, because one will always be better than the other at performing tasks. Remember, you are a leader in softlines and that includes all aspects of softlines! It helps me to identify the other TLs strengths and use those to my advantage! For example, I had a TL who was terrible at results and thought leadership, but was awesome at team leadership! She could get buy in from anyone, get them to do anything, and related well to almost everyone in the store... She couldn't get anything done herself and rarely got great ideas for improvements! I am the opposite... I struggled for a while with getting buy in from our stubborn leadership team, but had the ideas and the knowledge to solve our issues... So I built a strong working relationship with her where I could come up with ideas (using strong words like partnership and collaborates when talking to her, since she liked to work with others), and she could get buy in from others to roll them out.... all the meanwhile I was getting alot of task done!